The Hols begin...

The last few weeks have been busy, and Dad is finally on "holiday".

We have blitzed the front room, removed the Guinea Pigs and transported them into a nice new hutch outside, built by Dad and J from scrap wood and chicken wire. We thought they were attracting flies inside, and managed to slay in excess of 1000 houseflies using fly paper and an electric swatter from poundland.

Though on talking to colleagues at work, it may not have been the Guinea Pigs at all, as there seems to be a housefly-festation going round. But as you can see flypaper really does work - how very 19th century of us.

Today we put up E's climbing frame in the newly arranged front room (on account of the garden being either slabs (too painful if he falls off) or - at the moment - jungle.


As a holiday project Dad is building a simple CMS system suitable for a school Intranet (inspired by Fronter but aiming to be simpler to use).

Pinnie Gigs

A couple of weeks ago one of our hens, Fortunata, was on her last legs, so we brought her into the house (caged of course) to nurse her back to health. Within a week it was well and we returned her to her mates in the coop. But M said that left a lonely void in the house - she had got used to talking to her.

Well to cut it short, M decided she would like some Guinea Pigs. We originally planned to buy a couple from a breeder (about £15 each) but then a couple of 18 month olds were offered on freecycle because the owner was no longer able to care for them properly as circumstances did not allow. We asked, they accepted, and now we have 2 Guinea Pigs. We have named them Algernon and Ernest (Algy and Ernie) from "The Importance of Being...".

We also got them checked by a vet, but they are in good health.

M did some Googling to become an expert in their care, and also found good examples of how to cage them for maximum comfort (apparently 2 GPs need a minimum of 7.5 sqr ft on one level). We have devised our own cage based on Ikea IVAR shelving which we have plenty of - giving them a luxurious penthouse with just under 10 sqr feet on the ground floor and about 5 sqr feet on the top floor.

We knew they were happy with their new home because they immediately began making their "happy noises" and "popcorning" (which is when they kind of jump up with their hind legs - the Guinea Pig equivalent of "cutting a caper").

Young E is of course constantly wanting to see them and feed them and stroke them and hug them and squeeze them - but he is not allowed to do anything except feed them and then only under supervision - they still need to become accustomed to us and their environment - and E needs to develop his understanding a bit too.

But enough waffle, allow me to introduce the new arrivals with this time lapse film:

(For those technical among us who care about such things: 1 frame taken every 15 seconds, compiled into a 25 fps AVI using the free MakeAVI software, then converted to WMV with Windows Media Encoder).